Flexing on Death

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Rosebrook. The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew, the 5th chapter.

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Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up on the mountain, and when He sat down, His disciples came to Him. He opened His mouth and taught them, saying,

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Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

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Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. And blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

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Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see

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God. And blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. And blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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And blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

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Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

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This is the gospel of the Lord. Christ is risen. Death and destruction stalk the land like two big stalking things.

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And the thing is, is that the world is terrified of death and destruction. In fact, if you kind of think about it, every single action movie, death always plays a hidden role.

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Because the purpose of an action movie is that the action hero is supposed to defy death.

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He's supposed to make the bad guy experience it while all the time death is also hunting him and he narrowly escapes.

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The world is absolutely obsessed with death. And I would note, if you're honest, you've thought about it a little bit and maybe thought about it in a way that you recognize that it's a little bit unnerving.

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Because one of these days you are going to die, and so am I, if I don't kill this microphone first.

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It's just not holding on my ear. There we go. All of that being said, I think

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All Saints Day has rapidly become one of my favorite feast days in the church year.

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And the reason for it is this. It's that it's a flex. Now, if you don't know what a flex is, you'll note that from time to time

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I do a very cringy thing. I use Gen Alpha and Gen Z lingo just to get a rise out of people.

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But if you don't know what a flex is, let me kind of put it this way. When we think about Matt Sylvester, the police officer who attends here with the

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Sylvester family, he and his girls, I don't know if you guys know this, but Matt is really into chess. And every time

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I see him on his phone working chess puzzles, I think of it as a flex. He's kind of flexing that he's really good at chess.

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And so I dare not challenge him to chess because he's constantly flexing, which makes me think that his chess skills are podium.

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But mine, my chess skills? No, I have no chess riz, is the best way to put it.

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In fact, I'm pretty sure my chess skills are low -key skibbity. You get the idea, right?

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All of that being said, all saints is a flex.

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It's a flex, and it's a natural one if you think about it. If Christ is risen from the dead, and he is risen from the dead indeed, he's conquered death.

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And by the way, all of you who have been baptized into Christ, the scripture says, you have been baptized into his death and into his resurrection.

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Christians are no longer people who have one foot in the grave. They already have one foot in eternity, in the new heavens, in the new earth.

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And so you'll note that when we have a funeral, we preach Christ.

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The reason why we preach Christ and not the dead person is because Christ is conquered, and that dead person who we are having a funeral for is now with Christ.

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You'll note that when, have you ever been to like a funeral service? They're not even called that anymore. A celebration of life service from somebody who died who wasn't even a

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Christian. What a complete, nonsensical, worthless, vapid, empty thing that is.

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We get to hear some of their favorite songs, whoop -de -doo. And then we get to hear them eulogize, and everyone talks about how great a person they were.

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Well, if they were such a great person, why are they dead? I have to be blunt. The wages of sin is death.

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If that person's dead, then guess what? They're a sinner just like everybody else. But you'll note when you come to a

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Kongsvinger funeral, well, we preach Christ. And we do not lament and mourn the way the world does because we know this, because Christ has risen from the dead, that death for a

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Christian is a hollow form. Christ has said very clearly in the Gospel of John 11,

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I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me, even though he dies, yet shall he live. And everyone who believes in me, they will never die,

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Jesus says. So you'll note that all saints then is this natural thing that happens, and we have to come to grips with the fact that we've had a few funerals this year.

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We have a few funerals, it seems like, every year, right? And this year

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I had the honor of burying my mother -in -law, which was a very sad affair.

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And I can tell you from personal experience, death is not a friend. Death is an enemy. And none of us dies in strength.

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We all die in weakness. And so that being the case, how then can all saints be a flex?

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Well, it's a flex in this way, and it's a flex on death because in our readings chosen for today, we get to have the curtain thrown back a little bit, and we get a peek at what's really going on.

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And that is this. Every person who dies in faith in Christ, all of their sins are forgiven, and they are not lost.

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We know exactly where they are. Our first reading says this. John, the apostle, being given kind of a tour of heaven, says,

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I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the

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Lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands. This is where all who die in Christ are.

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They are before the throne of Christ. Now, if you remember the words of Jesus from the servant on the mount, Christ warns very sternly.

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He says, Wide is the road that leads to destruction. Many find it. And he says, Narrow is the path that leads to life, and few find it.

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And this is true. If you compare it like the big mass of humanity, if you were to go from every person ever born from the time of Adam and Eve all the way to, well, the end of the earth, few have found salvation in Christ of the billions upon billions of human beings.

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But all that being said, those who have been brought to faith in Christ are no small number.

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It's not like when we get to heaven, we're going to look around and go, Man, there's only a few hundred people here. No, the

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Scriptures describe instead a great multitude of people who have been brought to faith in Christ. Nobody can number them from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.

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I would note the white supremacists would be very uncomfortable there. They should seek to go to the other place.

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So all nations, tribes, and languages are standing before the throne clothed in white robes.

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This is a reference to what we talked about in last week's sermon, that we have the righteousness of God, His righteousness given to us.

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It is for all who believe in Christ. The white robes is that white righteousness of Christ given to us, that our sins have been washed away and we are clothed in splendor.

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And we have palm branches in our hands. And listen, who's leading worship there before the throne of Christ?

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These saints, human saints that have gone before us, crying out with a loud voice,

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Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the

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Lamb. True words, by the way, very true words. You'll note that there is no salvation in any of the man -made or demonic religions of humanity.

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There is no salvation in them. In fact, one of the things that they all have in common, and I'll keep beating on this drum, is they all teach salvation by works.

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You've got to do the thing. You've got to light the candle. You've got to pray the prayer. You've got to give the money.

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You've got to do the thing. And is there any, any, any certainty of salvation in that kind of a scheme?

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None whatsoever. You've got to make the decision, and if you haven't made a good enough decision, well, maybe you're just not a

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Christian. But the saints before Christ say salvation belongs to our

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God. True. He has won it through the shed blood of Christ, who suffered, bled, and died for your sins and mine, and salvation belongs only to the one true

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God. It doesn't belong to Allah, doesn't belong to Shiva or Vishnu, or Baal or Asherah, or Zeus or Athena, or any of the nonsensical, ridiculous, mythological deities of the ancient world, or even of today.

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Salvation belongs to our God, and here's the big secret, and it's no secret at all. He gives it away for free.

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If you are trying to earn it, you cannot have it. If you are trying to purchase it, you will never be able to purchase it.

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It has been purchased by the blood of Christ. It belongs to our God, and He gives it away for free to penitent sinners who recognize their sin, have lament and sorrow over their iniquity, and cry out and have confidence that God will forgive them for the sake of Christ.

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And so with this shout of victory for Christ, that salvation belongs to our

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God, the rest of the heavenly creatures, and this is quite an interesting group, the angels, so they think the cherubim and the seraphim, who were standing around the throne and around the elders, and the four living creatures, you know, the four living creatures from the book of Ezekiel, the one that has the appearance of a man, the other a lion, another an eagle, another an ox, right?

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The four living creatures, they are there also, and the elders and the four living creatures, they all then fall on their faces, and they antiphonically respond to this statement of worship of the human beings and say,

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Amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our

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God forever and ever. Amen. Are you starting to see how this is a complete flex on death?

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We have hope. We do not despair. We have confidence that the same Jesus who rose victorious from the grave, he has taken his saints to be with him in heaven, and if we die before Christ returns, we ourselves will join this heavenly throng.

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That's the point. So one of the elders then addressed John saying, Well, who are these clothed in white robes and from where have they come?

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John's response is a little bit meek, somewhat timid, and he said to him, Sir, you know.

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Not a bad answer. Rather than being the person who thinks he knows everything, trying to be the smartest person in the room and then pontificating and getting it wrong, which a lot of people do in their pride, he says,

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Sir, you know. And he said to me, These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. By the way, the tribulation began with the ascension of Christ.

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It ends. It terminates with Christ's return. And you'll note this life is full of tribulation, suffering, persecution for Christians.

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And these ones coming out of the great tribulation, they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the

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Lamb. Again, a reference to Christ's vicarious substitutionary death on the cross for all of them.

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Therefore, they are before the throne of God. They serve him day and night. Notice it says they've washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the

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Lamb. It doesn't say, and so they paid the proper amount in order to purchase plenary indulgences.

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They made sure to have a pilgrimage to Rome or even Wittenberg. Got to put that in the mix too.

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And they've made sure to give alms to the poor. And they served in the soup kitchen for several years and did all these things.

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It doesn't say that. None of those things, although good works, some of them are indulgences or not.

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Although some of them are good works, none of those things merit your salvation. The only thing that merits your salvation is the blood of Christ.

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He's merited it for you. And he's the one who can take your muck -filled clothing and replace it with these white robes.

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One of the things you'll note, if you know me, I don't like suits.

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I just don't. I don't miss having to wear suits when I was in the corporate world. And I hate having to wear a tie as well.

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But one of the reasons, this is going to sound really stupid, kind of shows you a little bit of my psychology. One of the reasons why

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I hate suits is because every funeral I've ever been to for a man, they've always had him in a suit.

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And aside from being a complete waste of a good suit, I cannot get the picture out of my mind of like zombie people in suits.

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And as a result of it, when I imagine what is going on to these people whose funerals

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I've attended and they were wearing suits, I just think how gross that suit has become.

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You do know this about the only thing that corpses do is decompose, right? And it's yuck.

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And so there is a guy in a suit, in a tie, and his body is decomposing and it's rotting and it's blech.

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Think of your sinful nature like that suit. Right? Disgusting, defiled, smelly, and gross.

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If you took the suit off of the corpse and put it at the goodwill, would anyone want it? No! That'd be gross, right?

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So that's the idea. We, our sin, is like those disgusting suits. But Christ has clothed us in these white robes that have been washed in the blood of Christ.

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And His blood is not a decomposing agent. It's a washing agent that washes away all of our sins.

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Therefore, having been forgiven, these all, these saints, are before the throne of God. They serve

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Him day and night in His temple. And He who sits on the throne will shelter them with His presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more.

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The sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and He will guide them to springs of living water.

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And I hear this, and I cannot help but think about the ending of the book of Ezekiel. And God Himself will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

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This is reality. Reality for Christians. This is where they go.

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God is not the God of the dead. He's the God of the living. And should you perish before the return of Christ, this is where you will be.

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Today, after our prayers of the church, we will do the commemoration of the faithful departed.

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List off their names. Some of them you will know. Some of them you will remember.

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And all of them are now before the throne of Christ, waiting for you to join them.

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And so, in defiance, in a great flex against death, we say this is our hope and this is reality.

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Death doesn't get the last say. And if you read the end of the book, at the end of the world, Christ Himself takes death and flicks

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Him into the lake of fire. And He's done with and gone forever. So then, who is this for?

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Again, note the flex motif. Our epistle says this. See what kind of love the

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Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God, and so we are.

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Now, when I read this passage, I said this in the men's Bible study last week. Every time

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I read this passage, I like to read it kind of with this tone. See what kind of love the

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Father has given to us? And the reason why I say that is because I've hung out with you guys.

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I've been in your homes. We've had meals together. Some of you I've traveled to different parts of the world with you.

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And I can legitimately say of every single one of you, you are all a rotten bunch of sinners.

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You are really screwed up. And so am I. Right? And so the idea here is that how could a motley crew of sinners like you and I, who haven't been able to get our acts together, who have to confess feebly every single

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Sunday that we've sinned against God and thought word and deed, how is it that we can be so confident that we are forgiven?

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It's because the Scripture says this. See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that even we, that we should be called the children of God.

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And the text says, and so we are. When you read C .F .W. Walther's Proper Distinction of Law and Gospel, and if you haven't read it, it's a good read,

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Walther talks about the fact that he was raised in Lutheran pietism. And for the

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Lutheran pietism that he grew up in, the most offensive part of the divine service that the confessional

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Lutherans would use, for them, the most offensive part was the absolution. Absolutely, the absolution offended them greatly.

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And the Lutheran pietist would sit there and go, you can't say that. You can't say their sins are forgiven.

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No, no, no, no. You're being presumptuous. You're being arrogant. How can you have such confidence?

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What if the person that you said that their sins forgiven, what if they leave church and they go and they dance or something, or maybe drink a little bit of alcohol, or go to a movie that's rated greater than PG?

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You can't say that their sins are forgiven. Really?

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Huh. You'll note, I'm glad that they're offended by that, because they recognize that with the absolution comes the voice of Christ.

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And Christ says, you are forgiven. All of your sins are bled for and died for.

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And so knowing that, knowing that you don't have your act together, and how can you get your act together?

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You still have a sinful nature. And the daily slog of being a Christian is waking up, asking

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God for strength in order to mortify your sinful flesh, and asking for strength against the schemes of the devil, and asking

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God not to lead us into temptation. And then at the end of the day, you look back at your day and you go, well,

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I attended really well, but didn't quite measure up.

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But that's the life of all of us, including the Apostle Paul, who says the good that I want to do, I don't do.

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It's the evil that I don't want to do that I keep on doing. Who will rescue me from this body of death? But thanks be to God, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, Paul says.

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So that being the case, Christ having bled and died for all of your sins, you being united with Christ in his death and his resurrection, in the waters of your baptism, you having heard the proclamation of Christ that your sins are forgiven, we don't hope someday to be

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God's children. If I just get my act together, maybe, just maybe, I might be one of God's children.

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No, we are God's children, the text says. That is what we are. And the reason why the world doesn't know us is because the world didn't know

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Jesus. And then note again, beloved, we are God's children now. That's exactly what all of you are.

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You are God's children now. Because your salvation isn't dependent upon your sanctification.

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Your salvation is dependent upon what? Your justification, and you are justified and declared righteous before God by grace through faith alone apart from works.

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Now this doesn't mean that we don't do good works. We do. We're created in Christ Jesus to do them. But that being the case, because God has declared us not guilty for the sake of Christ, we are

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God's children now. And what we will be has not yet appeared. And it won't appear after this year's

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New Year's resolutions either. It will only appear when Christ appears, and that's what it says.

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We know that when Christ appears, we will be like him because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him, who has this kind of faith and hope that comes from that faith, purifies himself as he is pure.

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So brothers and sisters, another flex, if you would. Death has no power over us.

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None whatsoever. And we are God's children now. I don't hope to be a

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God's child. Someday I am his child. You are his child now. And this makes sense in light of what

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Christ did in the opening sermon of his ministry. Over and again, this sermon really stands out.

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But there are a lot of people who have just really mangled this section of Scripture. You'll note our Gospel text today is that section of Scripture known as the

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Beatitudes. And everyone who hears the word Beatitudes thinks that the proper emphasis is on the word attitude.

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What is your attitude? And what is it being? Wrong or worse. If you remember that charlatan

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Robert Shuler in his Crystal Cathedral, he would talk about the be happy attitudes. What a load of malarkey that is.

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I love the fact that in our Greek class today, our students got to hear what this is all about. And I got to hear parts of their translations of this text.

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And Jesus begins his earthly ministry and his teaching ministry with these words. Blessed are the poor in spirit.

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Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Let me give you my translation. Blessed are the, well, the poverty stricken in spirit.

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Maybe that's not strong enough. How about this one? Blessed are the bankrupt in spirit.

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You'll note somebody who's bankrupt, they don't have any resources to pay any of their debts anymore at all.

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Back in the day, somebody who was bankrupt, they were put into debtor's prison. Now they can get off in court, but that's a whole other story.

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Blessed are the bankrupt in spirit. And you sit there and go, how is it possible that the poor in spirit, the bankrupt in spirit, that they are blessed?

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And by the way, let's talk about what this blessing is. When we think about blessings, we think about, well, daily bread.

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We have the blessing of a car. We have the blessing of clothes. We have the blessing of a house. We have a blessing of a loving cat.

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Well, sometimes cats are loving, sometimes they're not. But you get the idea, right? We have, when we think of terms like blessings like this, that's not what this is saying.

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When it says, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, let me give you a better word.

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Saved. That's the blessing that Christ is talking about here. It's the blessing of salvation.

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Blessed are the poverty stricken, the bankrupt in spirit. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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How is that possible? The poor in spirit, the bankrupt in spirit, those who can't pay anything, they're a bunch of screw -ups.

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How on earth can they be the ones who are blessed with salvation and theirs being the kingdom of heaven?

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Because the scripture says Christ died for the ungodly. And if you don't recognize that you're that, and you think that you actually are spiritually rich, you are deceiving yourself.

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What does the text say? If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

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Oh, how many times have I spoken to people who were foolish enough to think that they were pulling it off. Right?

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But the scripture says, Christ says, his opening words in his ministry are saved. Blessed are those who are poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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Blessed are those who mourn, and this isn't the mourning that comes from losing a loved one. This is the mourning and lamenting of sin.

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Those people who recognize that they are sinners and cry out to God for mercy, they,

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Christ says, they are saved, and they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

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I love this one. In fact, I love good stories that kind of play this theme out in human history.

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Let me give you an example. Recently learned about how the Brits and the

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United States won the War of the Atlantic. You've got to go all the way back to World War II for a second here.

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It's an interesting story. If you know, in 1942 and on into the early part of 43, the

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Nazi U -boats ruled the Atlantic, and they were sinking ship after ship after ship after ship.

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The rations were getting tight there in England. And so the

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British Admiralty came up with an idea. They didn't have a lot of men to be able to work this problem.

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So they took a guy who had been retired from the British Navy for having tuberculosis.

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So he wasn't even strong and fit. He was weak and coughed a lot. And they brought him back from retirement.

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And then all of the men at this time in Great Britain, they were either in the military serving in the army, or they were on ships that were part of the

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British Navy. So who were the Brits calling upon to then fill in all the rest of the roles that needed to be filled within the military and the government?

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Answer, women. And what's really fascinating is that the guy they called out of retirement, his name was

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Commander Roberts, he was given a group of women to work with.

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Now, they were called wrens at this time, the women of the Royal Navy, kind of how this worked out.

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They were called wrens. And early in the war, they were just given jobs like being typists, people who would answer the phone and stuff like this.

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You'll note that back then women didn't have very prominent roles in society. And I'm not saying that's either good or bad.

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I'm just saying that's the reality of it. But what happened is that there was one particular wren who was highly recommended to work with Commander Roberts to solve the problem about how to deal with these

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Nazi U -boats, and her name was Jean Laidlaw. She was the first certified accountant that was a woman in Great Britain.

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She was a number -cruncher extraordinaire. Now, usually I don't have very fond feelings towards accountants.

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I'll give her a pass. They're just next to attorneys, but they're necessary. And what happened is that they had to deal with the fact that they did not have good tactics, good counter -tactics, to deal with the

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Nazi U -boat attacks against these convoys that were coming in. And so it was Jean Laidlaw who did all the hard number -crunching, and she developed the first repeatable tactic that can be used against Nazi U -boats, and she called it

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Operation Raspberry. And the reason she called it Operation Raspberry, and she was very blunt about this, is because it was a pfft to Adolf Hitler.

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That was the whole point. And so her and Commander Roberts and their team of women wrens, they developed these counter -tactics that became very, very effective in fighting against the

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Nazi U -boats and sinking them. They were so effective, by the end of May of 1943, the

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U -boats retreated from the Atlantic because they couldn't sustain the numbers of losses that they were given.

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And so what's funny is that as they got towards the end of the war, Winston Churchill decided that he was going to have it be known that it was the women who came up with these tactics.

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And so there was a magazine article that was put together, and the reason why they did that is because they wanted to flex on the

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Nazis. And when the war was finally over, Commander Roberts, who had been at that point, he was promoted to being captain, he was

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Captain Roberts, he got to go and debrief the German Admiralty after the war. And he was asking them, why did you lose the

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Battle of the Atlantic? Why did your U -boats have to retreat? And they said, well, it was because of the development of better detection device, better sonar, of surface radar and things like this.

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And he asked them, well, what about those tactics? That were developed. And he said,

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I refuse to believe that we were defeated by a bunch of women who've never been to sea and never fought in a battle.

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It was too galling for him to have to admit. Meek and weak women defeating

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Nazis? You've got to be out of your mind. That's exactly what happened. And it's glorious.

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So think of it this way. The Nazis are all about strength, power, might.

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They hate the Ten Commandments because they say the Ten Commandments is a morality created by people who were in slavery.

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And if you embrace the Ten Commandments, you are embracing a slave morality, they said.

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But who were they defeated by again? A bunch of women. I love it.

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There's a theme like that in the scriptures. There was a woman who cast an upper millstone upon the head of one particular fellow.

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And throughout the Old Testament, that is always referred to with such infamy. He was killed by a woman.

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But that then plays into this theme. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

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It doesn't say blessed are the strong, blessed are the mighty, blessed are the conquerors, blessed are the powerful, blessed are those who go and take territory.

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It says the meek. Well, the meek, in the world's term, are completely useless.

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What good is a weak, meek person? But you'll note those who are spiritually poverty -stricken, bankrupt, who lament their sins, who meekly and humbly cry out to God for mercy, knowing that they have nothing to offer

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God, but they are crying out to him because he is offering them forgiveness.

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Those are the meek ones, and they are the ones whom God himself will give the earth to.

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The strong, the powerful, and the mighty, they will not be there. Only the humble and the meek.

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Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

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And I hear the words of Christ, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

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Blessed are the pure in heart, and each and every one of us receives a pure heart from Christ, because the

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Scripture says God replaces our heart of stone with the heart of flesh. These are the ones who will see God.

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And blessed are the peacemakers, those who preach the gospel and help through the preaching of the gospel to reconcile human beings to God through the good news that Christ has bled and died for all.

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And blessed are those who are persecuted for being peacemakers and preaching Christ. For righteousness' sake, theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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And blessed are you. Saved are you when others revile you, persecute you, and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on account of Christ.

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I would note being Christians a lonely road and getting lonelier. One of the themes that we discussed while we were traveling and meeting with the folks that we're serving overseas through our internet ministry is that the people we're serving feel like they're completely alone, that they are isolated.

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They have been dispersed by Christ into the far reaches of the earth, and there are no other Christians near them.

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The internet has become like the very lifeline that continues to sustain their faith, because they don't have any place to go.

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They have no fellowship. And sometimes being a Christian requires you to believe when there's no one else to believe with.

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Rejoice and be glad, your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

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In any of our texts today, did you see any shadow of doubt? Did you see even an inkling of hesitancy, proclaiming you to be a child of God, of being forgiven, of being blessed?

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No, not even one. Knowing then that we have been united with Christ in His death and His resurrection, and that our sins are forgiven, let us then continue to flex on death and say, you have no power over us.

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Let us exude that confidence that we have, and let us in defiance of death say, we are children of God because we are.

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Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia. If you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, you can do so by sending a tax -free donation to Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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Avenue NW, Oslo, MN 56744 And again that address is

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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Avenue NW, Oslo, MN 56744 We thank you for your support.

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All of our teaching messages may be freely distributed as long as you do not edit or change the content of the message.